Autumn happenings....

Hello there!
Long time no post!
I know it is over a year since my last post, shame on me, but I have decided to start posting here again, maybe once a week will be a good aim to start with.

The garden has been going great guns over the year I have been away from this blog, and I feel we are eating a far larger proportion of home grown and local produce, which I am very happy with. This is largely due to the super productivity of the Crib Point Community Garden, the communal beds and my own personal plot just have such abundance and variety that I can usually find what I need there or in my own vege garden.
Finding the time to actually get down there and help is the big challenge, as my home garden really needs my attention badly!!
Oh well, you can only do what you can do I guess, and i try to get down there once a week at the moment, so it is better than nothing.

At home, I have planted a heap of seeds for Autumn, lots of brassicas ( chinese cabbage, sugarloaf cabbage, purple broccoli, green broccoli, cauliflower, lime green cauliflower, kohl rabi, pak choy, kale)
and other things (sugar peas, podding peas, snow peas, celeriac, florence fennel, spinach beet)

As you can see from the photos above the germination has been pretty good, with only the kale not coming up( I think the seed was old), so I have lots to plant out very soon!
Forgot to sow onions, so might just direct sow those into the garden.

I have been busy clearing out the summer stuff that has finished and preparing for the Autumn planting, Max has discovered that it is quite fun helping me, so I've had some company, which has been nice.



The chooks are still here, although not laying too many eggs, grrrrrr, I think they are getting old and worn out, it doesn't bother me too much, I think they have earned a nice easy retirement under the fruit trees.
We might have a day trip out over the holidays and get some nice new young girls to refresh the flock and get some good egg layers again.


My little golden chook is the only one who likes to go wandering out of their run, into the rest of the garden. She has a lovely time foraging around, eating the left over tomatoes and other stuff. (She is also one of the only ones still laying, so the extra protein and goodies she finds must be of benefit to her)



OK, I'm off to do some work in the garden instead of talking about it!
Have a great weekend, and it's nice to be back!!

Summer gardening - so much good stuff!

I went down to the Community Garden (The Crib) yesterday, and look what I came home with! I think membership definitely has it's priveledges! I have had enough tomatoes to preserve a big batch, and there are plenty more to come. The Crib Point Community Garden is run on a communal model, so there is plenty of produce to share with members who go and help with the garden, it is really great knowing all this food is super fresh, delicious, local and organically grown. It doesn't get much better than that!



I thought I would show you the view of my oldest vegie garden from our back window. This garden was started about 12 years ago, not long after we moved here. I still love this garden, it is quite a big area and can produce a lot of food when I'm organised, but generally there is always a bit that is doing nothing, just crying out for something to grow. I have expanded over the years and now have several other growing areas as well, and am in the process of converting most of my garden to productive plants , with beautiful edible borders and lush cutting gardens (mostly in my head, but slowly becoming reality).



These are some of our chooks, the tough survivors of The Great Christmas Night Massacre, it was not a pretty sight on Boxing Day finding the fox had been busy while we were away for the night. Eight of our girls were dead, including our 3 very cute frizzles and my favourite White Sussex, the ones that escaped (7 chooks) were very distressed. It was really horrible. I am planning to get a few more chooks soon, maybe some rare breeds, I'll have to look into it. Meanwhile we have a very strict locking up at night routine so Fox can't have a second go.



It has been a good summer for the apples. These are Snow Apples (they have a French name I can't remember right now), and they have been great this year. They are not a big apple, but the flesh is bright white and fairly crisp, and they shine up beautifully. We hardly had any codling moth damage this year, I think having the chooks foraging through the fruit trees has helped, and there was lots of nice cobwebby spider action that must have helped keep the populations down. The Granny Smiths are still ripening, but look a bit small, I think I should have given them more water.



These are a patch of "Banjo"bush beans, zucchinis and capsicums (hidden at the back) with the odd stray potato coming up as well. These grew really well until we got a week of super hot weather and the beans just shrivelled up. Luckily I had already picked over a kilo from them, but they were promising so much more to come. Sigh. They have ended up producing another flush of beans, but they are kind of soft and limp, not that fantastic.



These are some of our climbing beans a bit earlier in the year. They are Rattlesnake beans, which are a favourite of mine - good producers and really delicious! Also a bit battered by the heat, but still produced well.

Anyway, I hope all your gardens are growing well and giving you lots of tasty treats wherever you are in this world!

cheers Jules

Back to Update 4 and new chickies!

Its been a while since I last put a post up, the weeks have really been flying by and I didn't realise it's almost a month since the last post! Slack me.

We have been busy in this time and alot has been going on, nothing too exciting but busy, busy, busy!
These are 2 of our 4 new young chooks, we had to cull a couple of our old girls who got really sick, so it was time to bring some new life into the chook house, hopefully these little cuties will boost our egg production in Spring when they get a bit older.
The chookie above is a very inquisitive girl who was intrigued with the camera and I thought it was funny how 'in my face' she was. ( Shame she is not in focus - sorry)
The kids are really happy with our new arrivals and they seem to have all settled in ok, not much harassment from the old girls.

Back to basics update 4

Harvesting
Tomatoes
Chinese greens
Beans
Carrots
Lettuce


Sowing
Broccoli -4 different types
Cauliflower
Red Cabbage
Kale - 2 types
Pak Choy
Savoy Cabbage
Silverbeet
Lettuce - Cos
Lettuce - Australian Yellow Leaf
Kohl Rabi - Green and Purple
Sweetpeas
Snowpeas
Stocks
Calendulas
Broadbeans
Spring onions
Onions - Barletta


Maintenance
Cleaned out hot house (in photo below) ready for big sowing session (see above)
Removed golden robinia from front garden in preparation for new edible borders
Had black wattle that was taking all the moisture from vegie patch taken out , this area is now much lighter and hopefully things will grow alot better without the competition from the tree.
Also planted 200 garlic corms saved from last year's harvest (saved the biggest fattest corms for replanting) after preparing a bed with compost and horse poo and dolomite.




Planning for future
Some friends and I are starting a "buying group" for our fruit and vege, buying in bulk from our local green grocer and dividing the produce between us. Hopefully will save some money and also get really fresh top quality produce to supplement the harvest from my garden and the Community garden.
Have been reassessing our financial situation, looking for ways to economize so we have some money left at the end of the year for a holiday.

Working for future
Have been trying to complete lots of little things around the house and garden eg. tidy up around 'derelict' areas of backyard, keep Kikuyu under control around vegie patches(an on going job!)
Have knitted a doll for my nieces 4 birthday, and actually finished it 6 weeks in advance, a rare achievement with me! ( see photo, I have also made a little jacket to go with it since the photo was taken) I hope she likes it. I am trying to make more of the gifts I give people this year, so this is a start.




Building Community
Worked in Community Garden.
Had group of girlfriends and their kids over for catch up on school holidays. Good fun for all.

New skills.
Learnt more advanced knitting techniques
Made hot cross buns from scratch (see photo - they were very yummy )
Made homemade marshmallows - Kids loved them.









What else has been happening?
It has been school holidays here for the past 2 weeks , so I have been doing things with the boys and seeing alot of their cousins and friends. It has been a nice quiet holiday , Gary was home for the Easter break so it was good to just hang out and work around the house.


I just picked these vegies for our dinner tonight , we are having a nice chicken stir fry with all these Chinese greens and tatsoi, beans, broccoli and snowpeas. I will use the tomatoes to make a batch of tomato sauce, as I have another basket full of ripe ones waiting to be cooked.
They look delicious don't they? I love seeing the garden bounty like this!



Cheers everyone!

Hello Autumn! Lots of gardening and kitchen action.

This is one of my zucchini plants that have been producing heaps of zucs for summer. They were one of the only things that coped with the heat wave, the rest of the summer garden is pretty much a write off. Miserly tomatoes, dried out beans, wilting lettuce, shrivelled capsicums, fried sweetcorn, stunted dwarfed pumpkins, the list of summer casualties goes on! ( Thankfully the Community garden has fared far better -those huge water tanks are worth their weight in vegies - so we have still been eating homegrown stuff) but on the other hand...........

...........It is officially Autumn today! I love Autumn, I can grow so many different vegies here in the milder months, it's terrific. I have been experimenting with growing times for different veg that are not supposed to grow through the cooler months, and I am finding that I can grow and harvest from lots of things that technically shouldn't grow at these times of year. Maybe because we are a coastal area it stays milder than other parts of Victoria; Whatever the reason, I'm happy! Hopefully that freakishly hot weather is behind us and I can get stuck into The Great Autumn Planting!

In the spirit of Autumn, today I sowed seeds. It was a good day for leafy things according to the moon calendar, so this is what I put in :

Cabbage - Red Drumhead x35
Broccoli - De Cicco x21
Tuscan Kale x56
Shanghai Paak Tsoi x56
Yukini Savoy x28
Red Pak Choy x28
Coriander x14
Parsley x42
Lettuce - Sunset x56
Lettuce - Mesclun Mix x56
Lettuce - Buttercrunch x21
Amaranth Grain x 42

These all went into modules, so I will transplant them when they are bigger. I will use some for my market stock, some for my garden and some for the Community Garden, I hope there will be plenty.
An earlier sowing I did about a month ago is going well, with everything up and growing strongly, I am watering with a weak solution of organic charlie carp every few days and I think this has helped them keep growing strongly after the initial germination.

Tomorrow is a good day for fruiting things like peas, so I have saved sowing snowpeas and sugar peas ( my favourite things to grow) till then. I have had good success with growing peas most of the year here, so we almost have snowpeas all of the time - such luxury! ( Another plant that didnot like the hot summer but the rest of the year was great!)


I also decided it was time to rejuvenate the garden outside our back door. It has a Tahitan Lime tree (which has never fruited, so I hope this TLC will have good results) and some big old roses in it which I have kept, but I pulled out some struggling bearded iris to plant elsewhere and some biggish clumps of cannas that I will divide and pot up for my friends and mum. There was also alot of dying scabiosa and dead nigella seed heads and sundry weeds, the hot weather has been useful here, as I haven't watered this garden much, so it was all very dead and easy to pull out. I gave it a good forking over to aerate the ground a bit and I incorporated chicken poo and horse manure into the surface layer. I am going to give it a good soak tomorrow with the bathwater and then a sprinkle of dolomite and mulch it with lucerne. It will be ready to plant with herbs and some great brassicas and leafy colourful silverbeet for a beautiful edible border!

I bought 20kg of beautiful Roma tomatoes last week, with good intentions of preserving them with my vacola kit. Very, Very Frustrating when I couldn't find the power cord to the preserver! I eventually found a supplier of replacement cords in a great shop called Bake and Brew, I also bought some seals and lids for my jars. They are in South Australia but I still got my items in 3 days - pretty darn good! So after a big day in the kitchen I am now the proud owner of 12 big Jars of chopped, peeled tomatoes!
I am actually proud of myself for completing this job, as it would not be unlike me to never get around to preserving them and they would just rot and become chicken food and a big waste of money! ( This has been my usual story; full of great ideas, but not quite finishing things off).
So we have some progress on my "being more organised and achieving more" resolution.
I also made strawberry jam, if my tomato day wasn't enough! Delicious on pancakes made from scratch with our own chook eggs, of course! I have definately been channelling some domestic goddess recently!

Ta da! Tomatoey goodness for winter enjoying!

Check out these potatoes!

Spent some time in the garden today, I tried to start getting the front garden beds under control - quite a big job as it turned out! I have been very slack and the weeds have pretty much taken over, so I've decided to pull out most of the plants in the bed and start again. It will probably take a week or so to get it organised, but I think I will try and create an edible border, one that is beautiful and productive!
I also cleared an empty vegie bed to plant my extra bean, melon and cucumber seedlings. It was dry as a chip so I hope I can moisten it enough to get them off to a good start.

I thought these potatoes were pretty impressive! They weighed 900grs just the 2 of them! We had them for dinner - very delicious. Not bad for a self sown spud left from last year.
Actually dinner tonight was a very local affair - we had roast beef from my friends cattle (about 2km away), and potatoes, beetroot, carrots, beans, snowpeas and lettuce from our backyard and my community garden. The boys gave it the thumbs up, which is always nice.

These are the vegies we had for dinner tonight (the potatoes and beetroot were already in the oven)


The Growing Challenge rules are that you need to grow something that you haven't grown before from seed. With that in mind, I bought some seeds on the weekend - quinoa ( a high protein grain, I thought might be good for the chooks), and several types of kale (scotch, tuscan, siberian and red russian) . I know it is a bit early to sow kale, but I thought I would get organised. Anyway, I can never resist a seed stall, I can always find something new to try!

I had my regular stall at the Red Hill Market on Saturday - it was flat out! There were people everywhere, and I sold more seedlings than I expected which was great. It was lovely weather and there is always a great atmosphere at Red Hill so everyone had a good day I think. There are some really fantastic stalls at this market, I love going there! Mum came up to give me a hand so I even got to have a little look around (even though you could hardly move there were so many people).